He stood in the lobby. But what a risk, he thought suddenly; what a hazardous game. The crowd parted to admit two German officials. They were carrying black briefcases and they walked portentously as though they had come to perform an operation. They wore grey scarves put on before the overcoat, and folded broad and flat like Russian tunics. What a risk. She could revoke; she could pursue him; she would know within minutes, if she had not known already, that Leo was lying, she would know the moment she reached the lobby and heard no singing from the Assembly Room, saw no trace at all of a dozen singers entered in the night book, saw no hats and coats on those very pegs beside the door where the German officials were even now disencumbering themselves; she would know that Harting Leo, refugee, fringe-man, lover manqué and trader in third-rate artifices, had lied to her to get the keys.
‘A gift of love, an act of love: how can I expect a man to understand that?’
Before entering the corridor, he stopped and examined the lift. The gold-painted door was bolted; the central panel of glass was black, boarded from the inside. Two heavy steel bars had been fastened horizontally for added security.
‘How long’s that been there?’
‘Since Bremen, sir,’ Macmullen said.
‘When was Bremen?’
‘January, sir. Late January. The Office advised it, sir. They sent a man out specially. He did the cellars and the lift, sir.’ Macmullen gave information as if it were evidence before the bailies of Edinburgh, in a series of verbal drill movements, breathing at regulation intervals. ‘He worked the whole weekend,’ Macmullen added with awe; for he was a self-indulgent man and readily exhausted by work.
He made his way slowly through the gloom to Harting’s room thinking: these doors would be closed; these lights extinguished, these rooms silent. Was there a moon to shine through the bars? Or only these blue night lights burning for a cheaper Britain, and his own footsteps echoing in the vaults?
Two girls passed him, dressed for the emergency. One wore jeans and she looked at him very straight, guessing his weight. Jesus, he thought, quite soon I’m going to grab one, and he unlocked the door to Leo’s room and stood there in the dark. What were you up to, he wondered, you little thief?
Tins. Cigar tins would do, filled with white hardening putty; a child’s plasticine from that big Woolworths in Bad Godesberg would do; a little white talc to ensure a clean imprint. Three movements of the key, this side, that side, a straight stab into the flesh, and make sure the shoulders are clearly visible. It may not be a perfect fit; that depends on the blanks and the print, but a nice soft metal will yield a little in the womb and form itself to fit the inner walls… Come on, Turner, the sergeant used to say, you’d find it if it had hairs round it. He had them ready, then. All fifty tins? Or just one?
Just one key. Which? Which Aladdin’s cave, which secret chamber hid the secret treasures of this grumbling English house?
Harting, you thief. He began on Harting’s own door, just to annoy him, to bring it home to an absent thief that his door can be fiddled with as well, and he worked slowly along the passage fitting the keys to the locks, and each time he found a key that matched he took it off the ring and dropped it into his pocket and thought: what good did that do you? Most of the doors were not even locked, so that the keys were redundant anyway: cupboards, lavatories, washrooms, rest rooms, offices, a first-aid room that stank of alcohol and a junction box for electric cables.
A microphone job? Was that the nature of your technical interest, thief? The gimmicks, the flex, the hair-dryers, the bits and pieces: was that all a lovely cover for carting in some daft conjuring set for eavesdropping? ‘Balls,’ he said out loud, and with a dozen keys already tapping against his thigh, he plodded up the stairs again straight into the arms of the Ambassador’s private secretary, a strutting, fussy man who had borrowed a good deal of his master’s authority.